Kathy Lynn Emerson's wonderfully willful heroine, Lady Susanna Appleton of Elizabethan England, has delighted historical mystery fans with her confidence and cunning. Now, Kensington delivers "Face Down in the Marrow-Bone Pie", the first installment of this deliciously sly mystery series, published to coincide with the newest hardcover, coming from St. Martin's Press this same month. And readers can look forward to the second Lady Susanna Appleton mystery, which Kensington will publish in November 2000.

When the poisoned body of Sir Robert Appleton's steward is discovered amidst the tasteful splendor of Appleton Manor's dining room, the genteel household is thrown into an uproar. Left behind at the sweeping ancestral state while her husband embarks on a political mission for a new queen, Lady Susanna Appleton takes it upon herself to investigate what she alone believes to be a cold-blooded murder. An expert herbalist, Lady Susanna sets out to identify the deadly potion that killed the crustyold man -- and to unmask a cunning killer bent on striking again.

When the steward at her husband's Lancashire estate dies under mysterious circumstances, Susanna, Lady Appleton suspects he was murdered. As an expert on poisonous herbs, she sets out to discover the truth but ends up unearthing more secrets than she bargained for. This first book in the FACE DOWN mystery series, set in sixteenth-century England, is "a breezy and amusing historical whodunit." (Booklist) Elizabethan mystery by Kathy Lynn Emerson; originally published by St. Martins and Kensington